PAUL WILSON
Will the fading neon lights of days gone by blink and glow again in safe sanctuary?
A couple of weeks ago, I suggested we borrow a great idea from Edmonton — a vintage-sign outdoor museum. Lots of interesting responses.
We lost the front of the Tivoli Theatre on James North in 2004. I asked if anyone knows what happened to the sign.
Historian Robin McKee does. He watched a crew load that sign onto a flatbed truck. But then, he writes, things went wrong:
“It was delivered to the city yard for storage on Rymal Road. I tarped it and visited to ensure it was still safe. I went to inspect one day and the sign was gone. It had been bulldozed into the back garbage area, along with my tarp!”
We have one sign in storage now: the City Motor Hotel. City staff promises it’s safe.
Some readers liked locating a sign museum on the lonely plaza level atop Jackson Square, with easy access from the library and the arena.
“Very interesting, and one way to make a destination out of the best-kept secret in the city,” responds Jocelyn Mainville, the mall’s leasing manager. She says it would come down to money and who’s responsible for curation.
She likes the Edmonton approach, where one large powered frame is fastened to the wall. The signs are affixed to that structure, and can be moved around.
With city budgets ultratight, we probably can’t tap tax dollars for this. Maybe a sponsor would like to see their name in neon. In Edmonton, signs are donated, and some public-minded sign companies have undertaken restoration at no charge.
Toronto is planning a sign museum, and I heard from Rebecca Stubbs of the Downtown Yonge BIA. If something happens here, she writes, she’d like to reach out: “It would be great to chat, discuss best practices, and just share plans.”
Reader Rob Muir posted that the letters for radio station CKOC would be a fine addition. (Canada’s oldest continuously-operating radio station, it’s known these days as TSN 1150.)
Nevin Grant, 77, is the man who kept the hits comin’ for decades. When the station moved from Garfield Avenue, Grant saved the shiny C-K-O-C letters from the scrap yard.
Those call letters are now in his furnace room. And he worries about what happens to them next. A sign museum? “Oh, yes,” he says. Readers gave me heck for leaving a beauty out of the last piece: French Fry Fred at Hutch’s. Built in 1946, it does not belong in any sign museum.
It needs to stay right where it is, a Beach Strip beacon.
Hutch’s manager Rick Creechan reports he has Fred serviced every six months.
“I’m spending a lot of money, but I don’t care. That sign is staying.”
He’s a sucker for signs. Not long ago, he wandered up James North, stopped at The Hamilton Store and bought a print of the Millionaire Drive Inn sign.
That four-storey masterpiece stood at Upper James and Mohawk, 144 bulbs for its frothy head of Sno Cap root beer. It’s been gone 40 years, but there’s no reason a sign museum couldn’t include a big bold print of that long-lost landmark.
Artist Jim Chambers checked in with a declaration that he’s loved signs for decades, especially neon ones. He’s photographed them, written about them. For a piece in Ornamentum Magazine, he included a Photoshopped version of the Bowlero sign on Barton East.
“There is something downright seductive about that chartreuse pin,” he writes, “its lovely curves, its round bottom.”
The lanes there have gone quiet and that sign is surely under threat. If only it had a place to go.
This just in, an email from Indwell (905529-0454 ext. 445), the nonprofit outfit that’s turning a storied east-end watering hole into affordable housing:
“We are just about to get rid of the George & Mary’s Tavern signs, but after reading your article, we are wondering whether you know of anyone in Hamilton collecting this kind of memorabilia. Any leads would be very much appreciated.”